Mail from China has brought to the
newspaper Le
Temps curious further details of the murder of
Kim-ok-Kium, the famous leader of the conspiracy in 1884
in Korea. Kim was killed by the hand of Hong Tjyong-Ou,
the translator – in collaboration with us – of Fragrant Spring
and a Japanese novel, Kou-NiNo, to be
published in the Nelumbo Collection. We had with Hong
Tjyong-Ou a close personal relationship and readers may
imagine the dark emotions inspired by the terrible news
of an action that seems so inexplicable and fierce. In
order to perform his crime, Hong Tjyong-Ou had first to
transport Kim-ok-kium from Nagasaki (Japan) to Shang-Hal
(China), and one wonders what means were set to work for
this, given that Kim-ok-kium was the implacable enemy of
Chinese suzerainty over Korea, just as he was the friend
and ally of Japan. Kim, after the failure of the 1884
revolution, after a Chinese army had restored the old
party in Korea, found refuge in Japan, and he lived
there for ten years with a pension from the Mikado. Hong
Tjyong-Ou had been a lieutenant of Kim-ok-Kium in 1884;
he reached Europe, where he lived nobly by his work in
Paris, studying the institutions, customs, science,
industry, arts of France in order to assist in the
rehabilitation of his country. He hoped, through
spontaneous civilization, to save Korea both from
European covetousness and from the yoke of the
neighboring Mongol nations.

He was really our friend, we have
been too powerfully interested in the success of his
work not to make a thorough investigation of the reasons
that prompted the murder of Kim-ok-kium. May he be
innocent, or at least may he offer some excuse in
self-defense or patriotic exaltation! We have very vague
clues here. Arrested after the murder by the European
Police of Shanghai, Hong Tjyong-Ou called for Chinese
justice, claiming to have killed Kim-ok-kium on the
express orders of the King of Korea. Kim, he added, is a
traitor. The excuse would be of little value to us if
Hong Tjyong-Ou was merely obeying his king; he had no
personal reasons to believe in the perfidy of
Kim-ok-Kium. We remember that Hong Tjyong-Ou spoke
frequently to us of the violence of Kim-ok-Kium and the
following words of Kim to Hong when they parted:

Hong - said Kim, - if you ever change
opinion, I will kill you!

However, Hong Tjyong-Ou in contact with
European civilization had changed his opinion. He placed
no hope in violence, he did not accept Japanese armed
intervention. On his return to Japan, did he try to
convert Kim? Did Kim make threats? Did he denounce Hong
to the terrible vindictiveness of the Japanese? Did he
he perform acts or speak words, which indicated high
treason? Was Hong Tjyong-Ou forced to pretend in order
to save his life? Did he repay Kim perfidy for perfidy?
These are the sinister questions we ask ourselves. Time
will perhaps solve them. Hong Tjyong-Ou wrote to us from
Japan before the murder. Once back in Korea, admitted to
the councils of the king, will he not be honor-bound to
justify himself to us for an action that he knows we
disapprove; the good, honest, noble Hong Tjyong-Ou we
experienced, so charitable to poor old beggars, so great
an enemy of all violence, polite, well-read, full of
melancholy poetry, will he want to stay eternally the
treacherous murderer of Shang-Hai? We do not believe so,
and a passage from his last letter even gives us some
assurance on this point.